Colombian state to apologize for senator’s assassination

Cepeda was a Union Patriotica congressman who was shot to death August 9, 1994 in southeast Bogota. Seventeen years after the crime, the Colombian government will acknowledge their responsibility for the assassination of the politician, and ask for a pardon for the murder before Cepeda’s family, said his son on his weblog.

The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights found the Colombian State responsible for both the action and ommission of the crime on behalf of their employees involved and ordered the government to publicly apologize. The assassination of Cepeda occured in the context of politically generated violence against members of the Union Patriotica Party (UP), said the IACHR.

The Union Patriotica was formed by the FARC and the Colombian Communist Party as a diplomatic arm of their movement in 1985. By the late 1990s, the UP was obsolete with an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 of its members murdered. Most of these murders were never prosecuted.

Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras will be responsible for giving the declaration and will be accompanied by Vice President Angelino Garzon and high-ranking government officials.